The Information-Based Indicia Program (IBIP) is a distributed trusted system proposed by the United States Postal Service (USPS) to retrofit and augment existing postage meters using new technology known as information-based indicia. The IBIP relies on digital signature techniques to produce for each mail piece an indicium whose origin cannot be repudiated. Thus, in contrast to traditional postage metering systems employing mechanical printing technology and physical security, the IBIP supports new methods of securely applying postage to mail pieces. Generally, the IBIP requires printing a large, high density, two-dimensional (2-D) bar code on a mail piece. The 2-D barcode encodes various information associated with the mail piece and is subsequently signed with a digital signature.
The USPS has published draft specifications for the IBIP. The INFORMATION BASED INDICIA PROGRAM INDICIUM SPECIFICATION, dated Jun. 13, 1996, and revised Jul. 23, 1997, (“IBIP Indicium Specification”) defines the proposed requirements for a new indicium that will be applied to mail being processed using the IBIP technology. The INFORMATION BASED INDICIA PROGRAM POSTAL SECURITY DEVICE SPECIFICATION, dated Jun. 13, 1996, and revised Jul. 23, 1997, (“IBIP PSD Specification”) defines the proposed requirements for a Postal Security Device (PSD) that will provide security services to support the creation of a new “information based” postage postmark or indicium that will be applied to mail being processed using the IBIP technology. The INFORMATION BASED INDICIA PROGRAM HOST SYSTEM SPECIFICATION, dated Oct. 9, 1996, defines the proposed requirements for a host system element of the IBIP (“IBIP Host Specification”). The INFORMATION BASED INDICIA PROGRAM KEY MANAGEMENT PLAN SPECIFICATION, dated Apr. 25, 1997, defines the generation, distribution, use and replacement of the cryptographic keys used by the USPS product/service provider and the PSDs (“IBIP KMS Specification”). The specifications are collectively referred to herein as the “IBIP Specifications”. Thus, the IBIP Specifications include requirements for interfacing user (customer), postal and postage meter manufacturer infrastructures which are the system elements of the IBIP. Furthermore, the IBIP Specifications set forth the information and printing requirements for the postage indicium.
The user infrastructure, which resides at the user's site, may exist in several different configurations, both of which are well known in the industry. One configuration includes a postage security device (PSD) coupled to a personal computer (PC) system. The PSD is a secure processor-based accounting device that dispenses and accounts for postal value stored therein. In another configuration, no PSD is required at the user's site. Instead, the user simply uses a standard PC and connects to a Data Center to securely download postage indicia for printing.
The IBIP Specifications provide requirements for the indicium that consists of both human-readable data and PDF417 bar code data. The human-readable information includes an originating address, including the 5-digit ZIP Code of the licensing post office, PSD ID/Type number, date of mailing and amount of the applied postage. The bar code region of the indicium elements includes postage amount, PSD ID, user ID, date of mailing, originating address, destination delivery point identification, ascending and descending registers and a digital signature.
The IBIP Specifications require that, for each mail piece, the delivery address and the corresponding postage indicium be generated and printed together and an integral unit. This is to ensure that address cleansing is performed and that there is a one to one correspondence between the delivery address and its associated postage indicium. As a result, the postage metering system must print this unit on the actual mail piece stock or label(s) for later attachment to the mail piece.
Generally, these types of postage metering systems, an example of which is the ClickStamp® Online system from Pitney Bowes Inc. of Stamford, Conn., are intended for the small office and home office (SOHO) market that does not generate large amounts of outgoing mail. However, this market has been slow to embrace the benefits of computer based postage. Instead, many potential customers continue to use other forms of postage payment, such as: stamps and direct post office window transactions.
One reason potential customers are slow to adopt these new systems may be that no good solution exists for applying postage to business reply mail. Business reply mail is typically provided by the sender and is preprinted with various information (delivery address) to encourage the recipient to return it to the sender and facilitate handling by the sender. Generally, many companies and private concerns use business reply mail to solicit information from recipients (current and prospective customers of the sender). As such, business reply mail has a wide variety of uses and is often customized depending upon the needs of the sender. A few examples of the uses for business reply mail are: subscription solicitations, information request responses, proxy statement responses (included with notices of annual stockholder meetings), remittance documents (bill payment) and the like. Oftentimes, the business reply mail is provided to recipients as part of a direct mail campaign, an invoice or as a detachable insert in a periodical magazine or newsletter. Thus, potential customers for using computer based postage receive large amounts of business reply mail.
Because of the requirement of printing the delivery address and the postage indicium together, problems exist when a computer based postage metering system user desires to send a business reply mail piece back to its sender. As discussed above, these types of mail pieces typically have the delivery address (specified by the sender) preprinted. Thus, processing this type of mail piece in conventional fashion would result in one address (generated by the postage metering system) being printed over the top of the other address (preprinted by the sender). Clearly, this is unacceptable. Therefore, several options exist. In a first option, the user may create a wholly new envelope from blank envelope stock and not utilize the business reply mail piece that was provided. This has the disadvantages of requiring the user to incur additional cost by unnecessarily consuming an extra envelope and burdening the sender (now the recipient) because the sender's incoming mail handling systems are most likely adapted to process the business reply mail pieces that they originally provided. Another option is to print labels for the delivery address and the postage indicium, respectively, and affix them to the business reply mail piece. However, there is a risk that the postage labels and their corresponding address labels may become unmatched. All of the label printing option have the disadvantage of requiring the user to incur additional cost by unnecessarily consuming labels and dealing with the complexity of feeding label stock through the printer.
Therefore, the large volume of business reply mail handled today has created the need for an improved computer based postage metering system that handles business reply mail pieces in a more effective manner without compromising the requirements of the IBIP Specifications.